Recent Articles

The ongoing tensions between the government and private sectors over Edward Snowden's document leaks has reportedly pushed Oracle to cancel a high-profile film placement deal.

Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, The Financial Times claims that Oracle first made, then sought a way out of, a product-placement deal in the spy thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

According to the FT report, Oracle originally made a deal that would have seen the company's branding featured prominently in the film, an action/suspense yarn about international espionage and terrorism.

Over the course of production, however, former government contractor Edward Snowden released the first documents in his now-famous data dump on government surveillance activities and digital-data archives.

Following the revelations from Snowden, Oracle reportedly decided that it would no longer like to be associated with a film about international government espionage activities, and asked to have its brand removed from the film.

According to the report, Oracle did have its brand scrubbed from the film, but the company remained on the hook for whatever money it originally spent for the product placement.

The company declined to comment on the matter when contacted by El Reg.

As the FT notes, Oracle has connections with the film beyond possible marketing interests: CEO Larry Ellison's son David runs the studio which coproduced the picture. That studio, Skydance Productions, also worked on other action/espionage titles, including Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Jack Reacher.

No stranger to product placement, Oracle has managed to sneak its products and branding into titles such as The Avengers and the Iron Man series. ®